Day by Day

I believe the Bible is a collection of metaphors.  People just have this colorful way of speaking.  It’s how we communicate.  A lot of symbolism in religion is intuition.

It’s about energy.  Very scientific, really.  Call it what you want.  But I believe when people congregate in a place of worship we create energy that connects us to people.

A friend wanted to go to church, so I went with her yesterday.

However, I like distance from organized religion because ministers are just vehicles for the spirit, but they are flawed humans.

I love Jesus — the symbol Jesus.  He carries our sins because we’re weak – it’s the way we’re made.  That’s why spiritual leaders have spiritual leaders.  They need someone to advise them so they don’t form cults, and tell people God told them to have sex with them, or to drink Kool-Aid with cyanide in it.

I do need a spiritual leader, some authority.  I have to appreciate that the spiritual leader is human, to have compassion for that.

Religions and spiritual texts have exercises where at the end of the day you assess your behavior – it’s necessary to function in a healthy way.

There are people who take the message too literally, tainting the idea of religion.

There is no cosmic Santa Claus, as the minister of my family church has said. God’s not going to save me from disease, death, debt – maybe to an extent.  I don’t think it makes sense for me to think that I made it through something death-defying because God loves me.  I’m sure there are people involved in some of the myriad tragedies who believed and who were worthy of this “salvation”, but didn’t “make it”.  We’re so self-centered.  I do believe it’s okay to thank God that you did come through.

God is my higher consciousness.  When I’m aligned with it, I get the answers to problems, because I open my energy up by being willing.

My spirit life is about radiating positive energy within challenges I face with people day to day.  It’s also about facing death, my own death, the death of loved ones.

I think the way we look at death encourages gluttony, greed, and hatred.  We believe it’s so final, that we cling to temporal things, including other lives.  That energy is transformed and not final.  I don’t know what happens when we die, but I should be okay with it because it’s natural.  So why is death bad?

You see it on refrigerator magnets, but really, we only have today.  That’s where my joy and so-called blessings are – not in the future after I’ve obtained my goals.

My spiritual quest is about learning how to stay in the present and being alive where I am now.   This makes my life more manageable and I can start new each day.

The minister who preached at my family church was intellectual, but he would build up a fervor, after he captured you with reason.

Reason is what keeps me faithful, despite outward appearance.  I say vile things, and contemplate evil, but in the end my spirit strives for moderation.  Mostly I walk in a certain direction, despite what I say.  But sometimes I am mischievous.  Sometimes I don’t want anything to do with God.

I don’t want to preach.  Maybe I have here – fuck it.  This is just my experience.  I believe that the universe is vast, and that the possibilities are just as vast.  And there’s so much I don’t know.  Why shouldn’t I embrace the idea of God? There, I said it.

Sweet Corn!

They said to buy canned goods for the hurricane.  The only canned food I buy is Goya Black Bean soup to put in my quinoa.  I bought a bunch of canned foods for 9/11, and for a couple of other hurricane scares.  The cans got bloated after while so I threw them out.  I usually just eat quinoa everyday because I’m like that.  I eat it with steamed vegetables.  It makes life less complicated to eat the same thing everyday.  I can think clearer.

For this hurricane I didn’t go crazy.  I bought two cans of soup, two cans of sardines, a can of sweet corn, a box of matches, a gallon of water, a Jesus candle and the regular groceries I usually buy.  I stood in the canned vegetables aisle and zoomed right in on the sweet corn.  Arthur from The King of Queens yelled “Sweet corn” once because he was amazed at something.

I forget that I like corn.  I had corn on the cob from the food co-op summer before last.  It was delicious.  We used to eat canned corn when I was a kid.  My mother put butter on it.  My grandmother made corn pudding.  Mmm mmm!  I put the corn in my quinoa yesterday.  Isn’t corn good roughage? – I don’t know.  But corn isn’t in my regular diet.  One of those misguided fanatics told me once in addition to the perils of eating ‘swine’ that I shouldn’t eat corn or lima beans because they’re fake food.  What?!!!  Maize is fake food??!

Speaking of fake food — while in the canned food aisle I looked at the Spam.  Hell no – I will not eat Spam.  It’s good though.  But every once in a while I will buy some really crappy shit like Fluff, or deviled ham – I mean like maybe once every six years – for nostalgia’s sake.  When I was a kid, we ate that shit sometimes.  But my family grew into consciousness about shitty food in the mid-seventies.  The Entenmann’s section had only three cakes left in it today – they cleaned that out before the hurricane.

Oh my what to do…

HIM?    HIM? 

SATAN?

Vacillating between ‘What would Jesus do?’ and ‘What would Machiavelli do?’ — it’s exhausting!  I guess I’m not that crazy.  Trying to summon my inner-psychotic wasn’t easy.

Do I stay friendly with the office bully because I need him in my pocket to scare lesser menaces?  Should I have agape love, dredging up the understanding that this is a poor soul, who needs compassion for the pain causing them to be like this?  What do y’all think?  What would you do?  What would the devil do?  Something really awful probably right?  But I don’t want to go to jail.

Love,

Sandee

The reality of me and a wild, imperfect, confounding life

There’s a woman I see on the bus when I come home from work.  She smiles constantly – a subtle, creepy smile — even when she’s sitting alone.  I heard her say something bitter with that smile on her face.  “What’s wrong with people?  Why don’t people move to the back of the bus when it’s crowded?  That’s what you’re supposed to do!”  She waved her hand indignantly, before smiling again with a slightly glazed look in her eyes.  “I knew it!”  I said to myself.  The smile was an affectation.  I thought, maybe it covers up negative feelings that she can’t face; maybe her parents told her that she should never show anger — to always be nice.  Perhaps they told her that she had to smile otherwise people wouldn’t like her.

It turned out that this woman and I knew the same person, a nice Jamaican woman whom I met on the bus.  I approached the bus stop one day and the smiley-creepy-lady and nice Jamaican woman were there.  The Jamaican woman introduced us.  “Hi,” I said, planning never to say hi to her again.  I’ve seen her quite a few times since.  I look away or turn my head in the other direction when I’m sitting on the bus and she walks by.  I fantasize that she thinks I hate her, that she thinks I’m a snob, that she thinks I think something’s wrong with her, that she thinks I think I’m better than her.  I fantasize that she’s desperate for people to like her.  Ha ha ha – what fun for me!  She’s someone I have an aversion to.  I don’t like her.  She sits very straight, and wears plain clothes, drab colors – with that smile the whole time.

Too bad for this lady because I read in a zen book once that when we get mischievous thoughts, we shouldn’t freak out and try to suppress them (These were not the exact words.).  The book said that we should accept the thoughts, to let them come in then let them go out, because it’s who we are and we can’t escape it.  We have that side to us no matter how hard we try to cover up the stench.  The writer said also – I’m paraphrasing – that sometimes it’s healthy to act out a little mischief.  I suppose as long as it’s not evil.  I’m not going to look at the book to make sure that I’ve paraphrased correctly, because I really like the definition I just quoted.  What if I’m not remembering it correctly?  I don’t want my belief of what the reading was about to be shattered – so there.

This smiling woman was forcing a countenance which made me uneasy.  I think that this is the same as me listening to music generally thought of as uplifting merely because it is a common belief that it would lift a person’s mood.  Perhaps I would listen to a song like the one below, which is really really good by the way – Mahavishnu rocks!  But believing that I should force myself to be ‘lifted’ from a mood by listening to a type of music that is commonly thought of as uplifting is supporting a false idea.  The song below has the mantra, ‘Let me fulfill thy will. Oh lord supreme, supreme.  Let me fulfill thy will.”  It’s a kickass song and I’m not dissing it – I’m just using it as a palatable example because I think inserting an actual Jesus Lordy Lordy gospel song would be too extreme and distracting from my point.  I could easily listen to this song with these lyrics and imagine that I’m merging with the idea, “Oh lord supreme, supreme,” and that I should release myself unto this vibration for an all around harmonious rest of the day.  But I would listen to a nice song like this and feel murderous, absolute angst, fear and self-loathing after going to work and confronting a reality that only required me to take a really deep look at myself in order to iron things out, instead of trying to escape my mood with some superficial means, or forced method.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4K1VxNg9Bc

Really what I might feel inside is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sem_3Gm3n48

I listen to this and feel invigorated, relieved of the feelings that the mood of the song mirrors.  I’m in touch with the reality of the anger and pain that I’m feeling.  I’m not smothering it.  I’m not going to church on Sunday and on the way home in the car suffering bouts of road rage, or gossiping or judging people on what I believe to be inappropriate based on what “God” told me.  I’m looking at me, the reality of me and a wild, imperfect, confounding life .

Don’t get involved in other people’s fights on the bus

An old man got on the bus demanding that a woman in front, in the old people seats give up her kid’s seat for him.  “Can I have that seat?”  He said, pointing to her kid.  The bus was a can of Granadaisa Sardines.  It was hot and I stood in back of the bus, sweating like a bitch on fire.  People were still getting on the bus, squeezing past other passengers and their baggage.  People were twisting around to see what was going on.  From the back I could hear the man because he was yelling.  The woman yelled back, “No!”  “What?!”  The old man said.  “I said no!”  She said back.  He yelled even louder, “I want that seat!”

The woman wouldn’t budge, so a nice lady, who also had no business sitting in the old people seats, gave him hers.  He sat down and screamed to the nice woman who had given him her seat, “I’m sorry.  I just had to sit down.  She should have given me her seat.  I’m sorry.”  He said to the mean woman with the brat then, “You’ll get old and I hope they don’t give you a seat!”

I hate when people who have no business sitting in those seats refuse to get up when old people get on.  Jesus!  It’s printed right on the seats to please let old and handicapped people sit there.  People don’t go to charm school anymore.  They don’t have manners.

An acquaintance of mine was on the bus.  I frowned at him and pointed to the commotion. “That man’s right, those people have no business sitting there.  He’s right!  I hate that!  I hate that!”  I said.  I wagged my finger and shook my head.  I was sweaty and probably looked like a maniac.  My acquaintance’s face was red.  He seemed overwhelmed with the commotion, with the crowded bus, with the heat, with me wagging my finger at him and sweating.  I even riled myself up so much that I got an acid reflux attack.  This was fucked up because I wanted to be on time – I hate being late for work.   The only remedy for the excruciating acid reflux pain was for me to get off the bus a mile and a half before my stop to buy a bottle of water to stop the pain.  So that’s what I did.

The lesson:  I was dumb to get upset over a stranger’s conflict.  I was already imbalanced as this was supposed to be my day off, I was running late, I was uncomfortable and hot, and as usual, had slept very little.  This incident was an easy target for displaced frustration.  God forbid I should have been sitting in the front where I could have caused more of a ruckus being an instigator!

So in the sunlight of the spirit I forgive the stupid bitch who was a peasant raised by wolves.  The poor thing just didn’t know any better.  What does a wolf know?  I should accept people’s shortcomings like the bible says — judge not lest ye be judged – something like this.  She probably didn’t go to charm school.  I didn’t either, but I didn’t have to.  I read “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which has stuff about manners and what not in there.